Highlights

For the first time in my life, I am living in a place where the changing of seasons also means a change in the weather — a change in the color of the trees, a change in the smell of the air. You see, I grew up and went to college in a place where the only indicator of springtime was a trip to Rite Aid for some Claritin. Now, I watch the city parks and distant islands beam bright green, and witness fluorescent leaves budding inches away from my apartment window. Oh, and it’s raining. It’s just like that one scene from Bambi with the thunderstorm, but it lasts longer, and it’s really more of a constant drizzle. In fact, that scene from Bambi is the whole inspiration for this mix. The brain-numbingly nostalgic “Little April Shower” starts the mix off like a lamb, and you’ll just have to listen to find out what it turns into.

The new Azealia Banks video is sort of like Madonna’s “Bedtime Story” video with the whole eyes-as-mouths thing, except with more owls and illuminati imagery. As long as she keeps coming out with crazy clips for us to gawk at, I think we can all put up with the constantly-prolonged wait for her major label debut, Broke With Expensive Taste — a big “what if” of a release that appears to be standing on the precipice of Detox-level purgatory. In the meantime, let’s just watch owls fly out of A.B’s forehead and hope for the best.

The band in question is the excellently named Shampoo Boy, a new Rehberg project featuring guitarist Christian Schachinger and bassist Christina Nemec. Unsurprisingly, the music these three are churning out is awesome, but Shampoo Boy finds Rehberg exploring some seemingly new territory as a composer. This is not the brutal glitch-oriented Rehberg of Pita and Fenn O’Berg nor the doom-laden Rehberg of KTL. Instead, there’s a surprising sense of restraint in some of Shampoo Boy’s works.

Take the track “Still,” for instance, where the trio create a gorgeous, near-homogeneous texture with their instruments. Electronics churn away, guitars click, and the bass pops, but after a while, these individual textures become less and less distinct, turning into a singular sonority. However, despite its novelty of timbre, “Still” subtly takes the ideas present in Rehberg’s ongoing projects with Fenn O’Berg and KTL and places them within a new context. Like Fenn O’Berg, “Still” similarly blurs the parts of its whole into a uniform soundworld, but instead of moving erratically from one texture to the next, the track revels in stasis like a KTL piece. Even though Rehberg may be playing with similar forms from his past work, he’s never done it in such a refined and indirect way.

Shampoo Boy’s album Licht is out in late May via Blackest Ever Black. You can stream the track “Still” below.

Hey, remember Cassie? She had this smash hit single called “Me & U” seven years ago, and it was something to marvel at. In a summer dominated by the sassy and the brassy (“Promiscuous,” “Aint No Other Man,” “Hips Don’t Lie”), Cassie’s sexy, sub-zero R&B provided a refreshing change of pace: ominous synth blasts, a simple four-note melody, and above it all, vocals that were so pure, so potent that you couldn’t help but swoon when you heard them. Since then, Cassie’s popped up on the occasional track — Nicki Minaj’s “Boys,” for example — but she still hasn’t put out a proper full-length since I was in the eighth grade.

This year, the Bad Boy chanteuse seeks to step into the spotlight once more, with her to-be-announced sophomore LP. In the meantime, she’s released RockaByeBaby, an out-of-nowhere pop juggernaut that’s entirely unlike anything we’ve heard from Cassie thus far. Need proof? Peep the intro — a sample from New Jack City, in which Allen Payne boasts “Now, that’s how you kill somebody my brother! You get right up on the motherfucker, and BOO-YAA - Blow his brains all over the sidewalk, in broad daylight!” Yeah, Cassie’s gone American Gangster on us, and it sounds damn good: a schooling in the methodologies of pop/rap/R&B fusion, backed up by a reputable roster of guest stars (French Montana, Pusha T, Too $hort). For starters, check out “I Love It,” a chilly collab with Fabolous, and the sneering, guitar-spangled “Bad Bitches.”

If an audacious enough director were to scoop up “The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2)” and lay it atop a low-lit sequence in his glossy new film, accompanying images of powerful machinery, great cities at dusk, or exotic copper-skinned dancers in a hall of mirrors (as the song suggests), The Haxan Cloak might start to look like an even darker sibling to Johnny Jewel’s Chromatics. Listen to the entirety of The Haxan Cloak’s upcoming Excavation, however, and stark differences emerge. Excavation tends to function largely in loops and meditation; “The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2),” with its forward momentum, represents the album’s exception rather than the rule. Whereas Johnny Jewel has now, for better or worse, been married to the image of a car’s odyssey in the night, The Haxan Cloak’s music feels much closer to spelunking. Hence the title, Excavation!

All said, at over 7 minutes, “The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2)” does achieve an expansiveness and transportive hypnosis that would stand out on any album, regardless of that album’s mood or mode of movement. Although the album features a journey of descent, this track is akin to coming up for a breath; as it amasses layers, amounting to a finale of melodic bursts, it’s like a headful of crisp nighttime light and air.

Excavation will be released in North America April 30 from TriAngle Records.